


Quarantine

by DreamsOfSleep



Series: Mars Landing [2]
Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, F/M, Future!Nick, Missing Scene, Oneshot, Science Fiction, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 04:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6940639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The quarantine from Nick's point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quarantine

**Author's Note:**

> This is an additional scene for my multichapter fic ["Moving Heaven and Earth to Find You"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6808741/chapters/15547156). It takes place in between "Ch 13: Rescue" and "Ch 14: Epilogue - Home" when Nick and Jess first land on Mars.
> 
> I wanted to do a oneshot of this scene instead of including it in the main fic because I liked the more hopeful, optimistic ending that the jump-cut between "Rescue" and "Home" provides, but it's always nice if you can flesh out more of the universe so I decided to post this scene separately in case anyone was interested in staying in this AU a bit longer.

He had been so focused on contacting Mars Landing and getting them out of Earth for so long that he hadn’t thought about what would happen once they were back on Mars. Everything was just supposed to work out. The zombies were the worst they could face, right? They were the real danger. He was short-sighted as always and she paid the price. 

\---

From the time the shuttle lands on Earth until the time they touch down on Mars, Nick makes sure he is holding her hand. He needs to know she is real, and that they are finally going home together. He thinks he became too comfortable with the idea of her. He should have been on high alert the entire time they were together, but spending the months on Earth next to her every day made him complacent.

He is completely unprepared when government agents grab onto them and pull them apart immediately after they leave the shuttle. He tries desperately to hold onto her hand but it slips from his grasp. He screams her name as they take her away from him, losing the love of his life all over again.

\---

The scientists and government authorities explain to him in their condescending voices that they have to take Jess away for her own protection and for his.

He feels a silent murderous rage consume him, burning through him from the inside out, but he swallows it down for her.

\---

They put him in quarantine for one month. He knows he can take it because he spent seven years without her and he can still feel her soul calling out to him somewhere close by. He can take it…he just has to think about those early years on Mars and pretend he is building bunkers again for twelve-hour days.

He worries about her though, all alone without him again.

\---

Winston is able to pull some strings and get him unrestricted visiting hours with her when they finally release him from quarantine. He rushes down to see her in the underground lab. She is trapped in a tiny six by eight foot room behind a thick pane of glass like some animal in the zoo. He puts his hands to the glass and wishes he could hold her.

\---

The scientists say she is immune so she must be the key for a cure to the zombie virus. He can hear her scream as they stick needles into her and cut her open with scalpels to take copious amounts of her blood, skin, and hair for analysis. He bangs his fists and sobs against the glass, helpless, pleading with them to let her go.

\---

After the hundredth time he sees them cut into her, he decides to break her out of the glass room, _consequences be damned._

He notices that one guard has all the key codes to unlock the triple set of double doors sealing her into the glass room. He waits patiently before launching his attack.

One day he jumps the guard as the guard is leaving the lab and aims a gun at his head. The scientists call in federal agents and officers from the Mars Intergalactic Space Station to deal with the situation.

“Drop your weapon!” Aly commands him.

“Don’t do it, Nick,” Winston says grimly. “You know I’m going to have to shoot you. You don’t want to kill anybody, Nick.”

“Just let her go,” he pleads desperately, but he releases the guard. He drops his weapon and puts his hands up.

Even though he doesn’t put up a fight, the federal agents taze him anyway and put him in a Mars jail containment tank. 

\---

Winston bails him out. 

They sit beside each other in the police station.

Nick looks down at his feet and quietly says, “I’ll be good…just let me see her.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, man,” Winston says apologetically. “They moved her.”

Nick looks up at Winston with tortured eyes. “They put her in a smaller room without a window. There’s no light at all in there; she’s just sitting in the dark for hours…Please don’t punish her for something I did.”

The scientists want to keep Nick away from her for one month. Winston is able to argue them down to two weeks probation and he gets her moved back to the big room with the glass window.

\---

After his two weeks probation are up, he goes to see her again. Her eyes light up when she sees him.

He presses his hand to the glass and she does the same on the other side.

“I’m sorry, Jess,” he apologizes sadly. “I screwed up so they wouldn’t let me see you.”

”Did they hurt you?” she asks in concern. 

He gives her a rueful half-smile, “You know they can’t hurt me anymore, Jess; they already took you.”

Her eyes fill with tears. He looks away; he hates that he made her cry. 

“I’m going to be good from now on, Jess,” he promises. “I’m not going to let them keep me away from you.”

\---

He visits her nearly every day, but he still has to go to work as a long-haul trucker since he is a contracted government employee. He knows he is already skating on thin ice due to his whole escapade with impersonating an intergalactic pilot to rescue Jess from Earth. The last thing he needs is more jail time.

He is exhausted all the time after taking back to back shifts before coming to the lab, but he still visits her whenever he can.

Sometimes he just sits in a chair with his eyes closed and his hand pressed against the glass. Even if they don’t speak to each other, he finds her presence next to him comforting.

\---

One day she pleads with him, “Go home, Nick. Don’t stay here with me.”

“I can’t lose you again, Jess,” he says firmly.

”You didn’t lose me, Nick; I’m right here,” she tries to put on an encouraging smile. “You’re exhausted. Go home.”

”I can’t, Jess,” he chokes out. “I can’t go home and live my life if I know you’re stuck in here without me, without anyone.”

She leans against the glass. “Maybe we should have stayed on Earth,” she whispers.

”The last two people on Earth,” he says and gives her a tight smile.

They know they are both reminiscing about that brief idyllic period where they lived on the Mexican beach.

The scientists rush in again and take more of her blood, hair, and skin. He grits his teeth and listens to her scream while tears pour down his face. His hands press against the glass.

\---

After the doctors leave, she drags herself to sit by the glass with her bandaged arms.

“Tell me a good memory, Nick,” she murmurs to him.

He can see their lives flash before his eyes. _Feeling his heart flip the first time he saw her, kissing her for the first time, the first time they slept together and he was able to put his hands all over her, telling her ‘all in’ and driving to Mexico, their first 'I love you's', their brief year as a couple and being able to call her his, the end…breaking up…missing her on Mars and all the years they have spent away from each other… finding her all over again…_ All the good memories and bad memories jumble together in his head.

“I’ll do you one better,” he tells her looking into her eyes. “Let me tell you about how our lives will be when you get out of here…a good future memory.”

“We’ll have a little house by a lake, just like you wanted. It will smell like cider. You’ll fill it with your books and yarn and flowers. You’ll have a closet full of your pretty dresses, just like you used to. You’ll teach the kids down at Mars Elementary and I’ll have a job where I can come and meet you for lunch every day.”

“We’ll wake up every day together and go to sleep next to each other every night. We’ll never have to think about not being able to touch each other because we’ll be able to touch each other whenever we want.”

“We’ll get married in a real church with all of our friends.”

“We’ll have two children, a little girl and a little boy. You’ll read to them and bake them cookies and I’ll take them sailing on the lake and put their toys together so they never have to wake up to parts in a box on Christmas morning.”

“We’ll never have to spend another day apart. We’ll grow old together.” His voice breaks on the last sentence.

They are both crying. She kisses his face through the glass. 

\---

He does his best to cheer her up.

He brings her yarn and art supplies so she can decorate the gray walls of the underground lab room.

He brings her books and paper so she can write her own stories.

He brings her some potted plants so she doesn’t forget that there is a whole wide world that exists outside of the glass room.

He marks the passing of time and celebrates all the major holidays with her so she has something to look forward to: her birthday, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, 4th of July, his birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.

On her birthday he buys her an engagement ring.

By Christmas he has enough money saved up to put a downpayment on building a lake house.

He tries to keep her hope alive by adding to the future stories of all the things they will do together when she is free.

\---

One day the scientists invite him ominously to a “meeting.” Twelve scientists sit across from him at a long rectangular table.

 _‘Breakthrough,’_ one scientist says excitedly. 

_‘Cure,’_ another breathes out reverentially. 

The second his mind registers what they tell him, he is running out of the conference room and down the corridor to the underground glass room. He sees her standing outside of the glass window for the first time. He runs to her and wraps his arms around her for the first time in over a year, holding her safe against his heart in his warm embrace. 

”Take me home, Nick,” she whispers.

Neither of them can stop crying. 

She is his again and he’s never letting her go. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Quarantined](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7212262) by [DreamsOfSleep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep)




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